REPORT OF ASSISTANT SECRETARY. 13 



collections will not present them where they can not be at once dis- 

 played or well arranged. Such inducements cum now rarely \te offered 

 here, but many of the larger museums elsewhere owe their principal 

 growth to generous gifts from wealthy patrons of science and the arts. 

 Specific mention could be made of several large collections which their 

 owners would have preferred to place at the national capital, but which 

 have been given to or deposited in other museums, because in Wash- 

 ington they would have to be packed away for an indefinite period, at 

 great risk of injury and destruction. 



The amount of floor space occupied by the national collections is 

 very much smaller than would appear to the casual visitor." The two 

 main buildings contain, in fact, only 195,486 square feet, to which the 

 outside buildings, mostly rented, add 43,203 square feet, making a 

 total of lioS.C.sit square feet. The latter are partly occupied by work- 

 shops, but are mainly used for the gross storage of specimens, and in 

 no case for exhibition or for the arrangement in classified order of the 

 reserve series. 



In London the subjects represented b} r the United States National 

 Museum are distributed among several museums, such as the British 

 Museum, leaving out the Library, the Victoria and Albert Museum, 

 and the Museum of Practical Geology, which now have an aggregate of 

 989,388 square feet of floor space, soon to be increased by 400,000 to 

 500,000 square feet in the new addition to the Victoria and Albert 

 Museum. In Berlin seven of the national museums relating to natural 

 history and the industrial arts possess some 575,000 square feet of area, 

 and the new National History Museum of Vienna has over 350, 000 square 

 feet alone. In our own country, the American Museum of Natural 

 History in New York City, which, when completed, will covera ground 

 area of over 5i acres, already has 356,800 square feet of floor space 

 available. 



A study of the conditions in Washington has shown that to prop- 

 erly arrange tin 1 national collections and provide for the growth of 

 perhaps fifteen or twenty years would require additional floor space to 

 the extent of something like 400,000 or 500,000 square feet. If this 

 were obtained through the construction of a new building having that 

 amount of room, it would still be necessary to utilize both of the pres- 

 ent buildings, and this seems the preferable course to pursue. 



SUMMARY OF THE OPERATIONS OF THE YEAR. 



AII'UOPRIATIONS AND EXPENDITURES. 



The total amount appropriated by Congress for the maintenance of 

 the National Museum during the year ending June 30, L901, was 

 $263,540, that for the previous year having been $238,540. The prin- 

 cipal changes as compared with l'.MK) were an increase of $10,000 for 



